The Clock Strikes (Hawthorn House - An Epic Urban Fantasy Series) by Sean Cunningham

Author:Sean Cunningham [Cunningham, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Hawthorn House Book 1.5
Publisher: Falconbrook Press
Published: 2018-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mel showed them to a bedroom in another part of the building. “Sorry about the one bed. Bathroom is down the hall. Those towels are for you, along with a change of clothes. I guessed your sizes.”

The room was London-compact. The spread on the double bed was a drab green and the bedside tables as sturdy as a pair of old men tottering along together on walking frames. A snake had been painted across the doors of the inbuilt cupboard, but the snake was also a river. It ran along the side of the room in a wide S, with its head down near the door.

“Looks like a great place to pass out to me,” Rob said. He still had half a beer in his hand. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“Wasp will tell you in the morning,” Mel said.

“You and he go way back, huh?”

She didn’t do such a good job of hiding her flinch of surprise. Wasp was the crack in her armour, that was for sure. She’d pulled off her leather jacket and wore a sleeveless black shirt and jeans. Tattoos went all the way up her arms. An octopus on her left shoulder wrapped its tentacles around her bicep. Flowers grew from vines on her right upper arm. The sharp spikes of the thorns were impossible to miss.

“He takes good care of his own,” Mel said.

“What does he want with the Egg, Mel?” Julian asked.

She tensed. Anger flashed in her eyes. “Don’t try using your magic on me. I haven’t forgotten the way you pushed me around on the bridge.”

“It’s dangerous,” Julian said. “And it’s damaged. Anything he tries to use it for could easily go awry. When we found it, it had cracked time between here and the nineteenth century.”

Rob couldn’t shake the feeling the octopus on her shoulder had shifted its tentacles while he wasn’t looking.

“If you hadn’t used it yourself, I might take your warning more seriously.”

“You saw what it cost me,” Julian said. His gaze didn’t shift from Mel and Rob worried he was about to use his compulsion trick. He had the feeling Mel would explode if he did. “You saw the blowback all around me. And I have experience with this sort of thing. I know how to contain the side-effects of dangerous and, I might add, damaged magical artefacts.”

“Wasp is angry,” Rob said. “It’s all he knows. He’s lived inside it a while, hasn’t he Mel? All he can think about is taking his revenge on Crow. He won’t care what else that means. A big old crack in time, Mel, across more than a century. You want to risk him doing damage like that?”

But they’d missed their mark. Mel shook her head in short, quick movements. “You don’t know anything.” She backed towards the door. “You’re not as smart as you think. Wasp will explain it all to you in the morning. You’ll see.”

And then she was gone. She pulled the door shut after her, though didn’t stay around to latch it.

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